My rav at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, once said in class that Parashat Behar is the most profound biblical text about redemption. (Rabbi Tucker, who was the dean at the time, is something of a genius. In his seminar, he would take the chit-chat of the group as we entered class about that week's "Saturday Night Live", and almost two hours later weave it into his wrap-up of whatever discussion we had on Jewish theology.)
Leviticus 25 is about redemption. But rather than talking, say, about the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, the Torah here talks about the technicalities of land and home ownership once the Jews enter Eretz Yisrael.
In Parashat Behar, we learn about yovel, the jubilee (same word in English) that occurs every fifty years. Every fifty years, all land returns to the possession of the family to which it had been assigned when the people first entered the land. If during the fifty years, a person had to liquidate his land and sell it in order to have money to survive, there was an opportunity for a family member to redeem the land on his behalf. That family "redeemer" would pay the new order the value of the remaining harvests until the upcoming jubilee. Then the land would revert to its original family possessor.
Notice that I'm not using the word "owner." More on that.
Why is this called redemption? Why does the buying back of property use the same word as the liberation from slavery?
Think about what "redeem" really means. In commerce, you can redeem an offer or a coupon. The coupon represents a possibility, a potential. In a sense, when you "redeem" it the merchant pays you back for something you are willing to pay to have.
In Judaism, we have pidyon haben, the redemption of the first-born male. The parents go on the thirtieth day to a kohen, a descendent of Aharon (Aaron), and give five coins to "buy back" the son. The son is already theirs, but the Torah says that the first-born is also potentially God's, in appreciation for God's saving the first-born boys in Egypt.
We also have, more seriously, the command of pidyon shvuyim, the redemption of captives and hostages. Here again, the Jews are required (under most circumstances) to pay for someone's freedom, which the capitve is already entitled to. That freedom is there, even though it's being submerged or hidden, to say the least.
Redemption, in all these examples, is a process where something potential becomes real. When something that exists beyond view is brought to the fore. Redemption is a "transaction" that completes, not an exchange created on the spot.
In Parashat Behar, redemption is linked with the idea that everyone has an equal place, an equal stake, and an equal possibility to prosper in the Land of Israel. Between he jubilees, that becomes submerged. As we know it does all the time, as some people prosper and others suffer. The real diverges from the ideal. But redemption exists; the ideal will become real again, either through a family "redeemer" or universally at the jubilee.
In the Torah's vision, there is no ownership of land by people in the sense of a permanent, individual right. (There is, actually -- houses in cities can be owned in perpetuity.) Land is owned by God, and that means that each individual Israelite or family is leasing or using what it currently holds. (Even today, large swaths of Eretz Yisrael are not actually owned by individuals, but held by the Jewish National Fund or the government and leased out to "owners.")
And the Torah builds the jubilee into the Land of Israel from the very first moment of Jewish settlment there. In that way, entering the land to build a society based on Torah is itself a completion of the creation of the earth. It is the way that the ideals that are potential in any society become real through Torah, the Jews, and the Land of Israel.
Redeem means "re-deem" -- to reaffirm a declaration, a reality, in the event it had become obscured from view. And this all is the secret of God's redemption of the Jews from Egypt as well. In addition to ending our oppression, God re-deemed us: returned to us and the world our name, and our essential purpose.
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